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The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (IWAMD) at the University of Limerick will host an international cohort of music and dance researchers on Friday 9th February. The conference, entitled Vernacular and ‘Ethnic’ Music in Higher Education: Colonial and Post-Colonial Perspectives, invites researchers to explore the way that traditional and folk music has become embedded in the work of higher education institutions in recent decades.
Facilitated by Erasmus + funding, staff from IWAMD visited institutions in Ethiopia and Palestine in the summer of 2023 as part of a network and capacity building exercise, which has led to the conference.
This free conference will explore some of the difficult questions that have emerged from analyses of vernacular music through the lens of western art music. The extent to which western art music might be seen as a colonising force is central to the call for papers, and many of the papers address the specific ways in which post-colonial societies have developed and organised methods for teaching their own music. Selmawit Aragaw Erkihun, Associate Dean of Performing and Visual Arts at Addis Ababa University will address the specific difficulties of fully establishing Ethiopian traditional music within western art and jazz performance programmes in her country. Meanwhile, Palestinian composer Jiries Boulata will explore some of the challenges of ‘translating’ traditional Oriental music for western instruments. IWAMD will also welcome a delegation of Georgian academics, who will discuss the way in which Georgian polyphonic singing, now recognised as a piece of intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO, was treated under Soviet occupation. Set against the backdrop of a sharp increase in conflicts around the world which can be viewed through a colonial lens, the conference will shed light on the everyday work of academics and teachers on those societies.
Full programme and registration details,
Contact: niall.keegan@ul.ie / conor.caldwell@ul.ie / avril.mcLoughlin@ul.ie